James Bowen's photos with the keyword: Downtown Warsaw

Seeing that the end was nigh for the Nazis, the Polish Home Guard, rose against them with the help of local Warsaw residents. They assumed that the Russians, who were approaching from across the other side of the Vistula (river) would help. They were wrong. After some initial success, the were overwhelmed by the Nazis, who levelled much of the city in the aftermath (only 15% of Warsaw was left standing by the end of the war). Stalin claimed the troups were too exhausted and ill supplied to help. There is some suspicion, however, that Stalin was only too pleased to let the Nazis break the back of the Home Guard, who he regarded as a strong element of the Polish national identity.

Pawiak was a political prison in Warsaw that was used by authoritarian leaders up to 1944, when it was destroyed by the retreating Nazis. 37,000 (of the 100,000 people that the Nazis incarcerated there) died, either there or at concentration camps. There are tablets like this dotted round the outside of the building. I think they comemorate what went on in there. I have no idea what the tablet says, however.